Secrets of the Mind
by MiekKenr
Summary: Marik Thorne was never cut out to the be special forces. He was a computer geek, a slicer, a desk jockey. That all changed when the Empire cooked up a secret project hijacking people's brains to carry dangerous information, and one of them was his sister. Now he's been given an even more dangerous assignment: he's going alone to Nar Shaddaa to help uncover even worse mysteries.


**Secrets of the Mind**

Marik watched his sister float in bacta, unchanged for weeks. After the disaster on Balmorra, he had gone for more intensive combat training while she underwent surgery after surgery. Despite all the efforts of a dozen surgeons, Kira had lapsed into a coma. Leaving her side was the hardest thing he'd ever done and the six weeks spent on Ord Mantell had felt like six months. Returning to Coruscant was all he wanted and now that he was here, he felt helpless and useless.

"I-S-One Thorne."

Marik stiffened and snapped to attached as he whirled on his heel. The voice that had called him by his MOS was Colonel Shiod, a smart human man in his late fifties, and head of Special Systems Intelligence. His boss. His mentor. A man who inspired both awe and fear at the same time.

"Sir."

"At ease Petty Officer," Shiod said and stroked his chin. He stared into the medical bay, at Marik's sister as she floated pale and lifeless. "No change?"

"No change, Sir."

"Wish I could say that was hopeful," he said as he turned to Marik. His pale, hazel eyes were piercing and Marik felt suddenly exposed and naked. They reminded him of Eram's eyes, the zabrak who had led his ill-fated team into a Balmorra facility and rescued Kira. They had all died, yet Marik had lived.

"Have they analyzed the…" Marik winced at the term to come. "The brainbox?" That was the code name they had given it, an electronic databank implanted into his sister's brain by the imperial's on Balmorra. It contained encrypted material that even Marik couldn't decipher. Not that he'd been given the chance. High command had removed him from the mission a bare week after returning.

_And sent me to Ord Mantell while they put a knife to her head._

Shiod nodded, turning his gaze away from Marik, and back to Kira's floating form. "The code was extracted. I was able to give SSI three weeks and that was all they managed before high command caught wind. I'm sorry Thorne, I would have given you more time. You're my most talented slicer but…"

_But your hands are tied._ Marik nodded, understanding. "Thank you, sir."

"The code was sent up the chain of command. It's no longer in SSI's hands."

_What?_

"Excuse me, Sir?"

Shiod stared intently at the bacta tank, his pale eyes narrowed. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. "This goes through the backbone of the Republic, Thorne. I have been left in the dark. Republic Intelligence itself has been removed from this. I don't like the smell of it."

_Me neither_, Marik thought. _But why are you telling me?_

As if Shiod had read his mind, he smirked and slid his gaze toward him. "I lost my son Balmorra, ten years ago. Died during the Verdin offensive. Eighteen, just a kid. I understand that this is personal for you. Ghost Team Five were good people too, I know Aria Nemroe's mother. They wouldn't even tell her where she died."

Shiod held out a datapad for him. "I understand you completed your advanced combat training with fair marks. I had hoped so, I think you'll need it."

Marik took the datapad and looked it, frowning. On it was a transportation manifest and several IDs for him. None of them were cover identities, like operatives, but they were civilian identifications. Shiod went on. "I'm sending you on leave, Thorne. You deserve some… time off. When you get to Nar Shaddaa, say hello to Cami for me."

Shiod turned to go but then stopped at the door and looked back him. He was cast all in shadow, with his eyes glinting from a nearby chronometer. "Good luck, Marik." And then he was gone.

Marik turned back to look at his sister's body floating in its tank. He glanced down at the datapad, feeling his stomach twist and threaten to flip over. He knew this wasn't Leave. He'd just been given a mission to find out more about what was going on, to help his sister… and none of it was sanctioned by the Republic.

"Going rogue," he mused with a sick feeling in his gut. "I never liked those holos."

Nar Shaddaa was as filthy as the holos he hated too. He'd hoped that bit was exaggerated, but as he stepped in something foul-smelling, he decided that the Force hated him. _Good thing I'm not a Jedi, I'd be a real joke._ Not that he was much of a covert agent either. For the hundredth time, since leaving Coruscant, he wondered what in seven hells he was doing. A blaster pistol sat at his hip, computer spikes were concealed in the sleeves of his jacket and a secure comm rested in his ear. By all rights, he should feel like a super spy.

Instead, he felt like a joke. Walking down the ramp of the transport, he waved aside the gaseous cloud that belched from its cooling repulsors and tried not to touch the hilt of his weapon. Just having it there made him nervous. Keyboards and slide-screens were his weapons, not BL-47s and plastiform grenades.

_I could just… say I never found Cami and find a nice hotel to sit out this entire trip._ The thought left him feeling ashamed, but at the same time it boosted his courage that he could always get out of this if it felt too hot. He pulled at his jacket collar and made his way through the spaceport to a hail a taxi.

"State your destination," the droid driver told him as he sat down. Marik tapped at his datapad and tried to keep his voice clear and strong. "Pargo's Casino. And uh… step on it."

"All transports leave on time," the droid said and Marik felt a distinct impression that it was all he was like to receive. The car pulled out into thin air and accelerated quickly before joining the flow of traffic through Nar Shaddaa's transportation quarter. The planet was dark, like perpetual nightfall and almost all the lights seemed to glow with a pale gray haze. It made the sights around him feel surreal, like an old holo that had faded and deteriorated.

Pargo's Casino looked no different than the rest of the places he'd seen, so when the taxi dropped him off, he felt momentarily lost. Only a dancing twi'lek in glowing lines indicated where the Casino's entrance was. He walked below her virtual form, momentarily bathed in faded yellow light. The doors were overlooked by two trandoshans who looked very hungry. Marik kept his gaze down and hoped they didn't both with ID.

They didn't and he passed right through a weapons scan that didn't work. No one batted at eye at his unhidden pistol and as he looked around, saw that almost everyone was armed. _I am so out of my element_, he thought and wiped sweat from his brow. _Be brave, remember Eram and Damian._ The image of Damian sitting there, having lost one arm in an explosion and holding a pistol in the other to hold off imperial guards, still burned in his mind. Aria's last transmission had stuck with him too. "Goodbye, One," was all she'd said but there was something about her voice that said more. Eram had looked back in her direction like he meant to go back for her.

_Lovers or family, I'd have done the same for Kira… but could I have left her there?_ He didn't know the answer to that question. He didn't want to know the answer either. Kira was safe in a bacta tank, deep in Intelligence headquarters. Aria died alone on Balmorra without a grave to mark or a body to grieve over. All of them did, so he and Kira would live. _I can't let them down_, he decided. _No matter what._

With somewhat new resolve, Marik gazed around at the casino and did his best to still his fear. Not a single patron in the place looked less dangerous than a wild, rabid bantha. Most of them were big enough to be banthas. Most were visibly armed and Marik assumed that all of them were armed in ways that were not visible. _They have arms, and that is probably enough to ruin my day._

Someone shoved past him with a curse and he hurried down the steps, toward the bar. _Agents always order drinks in the holos, and their contacts come to them._ He decided it was as good a plan as any and approached the tender. "Blue fizz," he said, thinking of the worst drink he could come up with. "Double the blue."

It was impossible to read the expression on a rodian, so he had no idea what he or she thought of that. His drink arrived moments later, fizzing, bubbling, and very blue. He stole glances left and right and then sipped it. Liquid fire exploded in his mouth and he had a hard time not gagging. _Act natural, just act natural!_

Two hours later, he was halfway through his drink and no closer to finding this girl named Cami. He had scanned the bar, looking for any clue that someone was waiting for him but all he'd accomplished was a headache from the music and a mild case of drunkenness.

_Well that didn't work._

He slid off his seat, taking his drink with him, and approached the stage. _Maybe she's one of the dancers?_ All around him, the gambling tables erupted in either shouts of triumph or groans of despite. More than once he thought he heard the discharge of blasters. He kept a firm grip on his drink and did his best not to touch his blaster. Once he found a seat, he'd check his datapad again and see if there was something he'd missed.

"You know," said a distinctly feminine voice from behind him. "You really stand out. Daved said you would be awkward but… _stang_." Marik turned to see a young woman leaning against a slot machine wearing a smirk so big it nearly reached her eyes. Her skin was pale, though her left cheek had the tell-tale signs of electronic implants, and her left eye glittered with an unnatural blue light. Her red hair angled up from her chin to a short cut in the back. Marik found himself thinking it suited her face, which was more than a little pretty.

"Cami?" he asked, doing his best to sound nonplussed. Her smirk faded slightly as she nodded and blew an errant strand of hair from her eyes. "I'm sorry to hear about your sister. We've all lost people in this war huh?"

Marik shrugged. "Yeah, I guess… I mean she's not dead, just…"

"I've been read in," Cami said and nodded towards an alcove where a darkened booth sat. "Let's talk." When they'd sat and Cami seemed sure that they wouldn't be overheard, she leaned towards him. "First off, I'm not Intel, a spec op trooper, or anything. I'm doing this as a favor for a friend. Got me?"

Marik blinked. "Uh, yeah, sure." He paused and then asked. "Doing… what exactly?"

Cami grinned. "Finding out how deep this goes. My brother was one of those drones, implanted and then detonated when his cargo was discovered. I only put the pieces together when Daved told me about your sister's condition. I've tracked down where some of those datafeeds to Balmorra came from."

Frowning, Marik leaned forward, his natural curiosity piqued. Once again he also found himself gazing at her face and wondering if the skin was soft, or if it felt like a computer shell over her cybernetics. He mentally slapped himself. _Keep your focus, idiot._

"Uh, don't take this the wrong way Miss uh... Cami, but why do you... or really, _how_ do you know that?"

She shrugged and bit her lip, which Marik marked as a small nervous habit. He'd watch for it again to see if it might be a tell for a lie. The gesture also made her look so young, maybe no older than he was but he couldn't believe it. The datapad mentioned Camiera Sheravin was a privateer, a free trader and possibly ex-imperial intelligence. The last part made him the most nervous.

"I have some friends your people don't," she said. "Look, are we going to argue all day about why or how? You came here, I'm flying us there. You and I will both get in, check the data dump and poof, ghosts."

_Ghosts._ The name made Marik shiver and his fingers shake. He concentrated momentarily on the Casino's music to keep the voices of five other Ghosts out of his mind. "Goodbye, One." Aria's voice crashed through the music, the din and roar of winnings and losings. It had been a whispered voice, a sad voice, filled with longing and regret. _She had left things unsaid._ He knew the feeling well.

"Yeah, right, easy as dancing in a cantina," he said with a half-hearted grin and sipped his drink, which burned even worse in his throat. She laughed, a genuine and amused chuckle that made Marik grin. She nodded. "Yeah guy, just like that."

"Where are we going?"

Cami sat back and grinned at him in silence for a short time. That made Marik's mirth fade away like ice in a Tattooine scorcher. "You might want to finish that before I tell you."

Marik frowned and looked at the drink. It fizzed and foamed and smoked, foretelling a bad end for him if he followed such advisement. He shook his head and sighed. Can't be so bad, I went to Balmorra. I faced a Sith! With a bit of new resolve, he looked up at her. "Where are we going? Where is this data cache?"

She shrugged and settled back, her grin as wide as ever. "Ilum."

"Ilum," Marik said as calmly as he could muster. "Ilum?" He fought the urge to scream "why me!" or "you have to be kidding me!" but said none of those things. Instead he sat back, took his drink in hand and downed it in two gulps. When he placed the drink back on the table with shaky fingers, he was ready to admit that the universe hated him.

"Yep, Ilum."

"You sure we can't just go make a frontal assault on Dromand Kaas instead? It'd be easier." He leaned forward and gripped his temples as his head threatened to explode from the fire that had climbed north of his belly. "This... that's... we've been trying to crack Ilum's security for years! Years!"

"Keep your bloody voice down," Cami said, her voice hard-edged. She reached forward and grabbed a fistful of his jacket collar and dragged him closer. "And grow a pair, Marik Thorne. The Empire is doing something terrible to people and we are going to find out why and how, so dress warmly." She let him go, though her eyes did hold a sense of understanding in them, a softness her voice did not have. "It's going to be chilly."

Pain. She floated in pain and darkness. She drowned but could not die. Her body screamed to for escape but could not move and her mind buzzed with a power that she could not contain.

Bacta, it was the bacta. It healed what should be an open wound, must be an open wound to work. She was floating in poison, trapped within a prison of healing. "Secure Protocol Four-Seven-Nine-Oh-Six Secure. Transmission Incoming."

Data, fields and fields of data danced in the darkness before her. That voice had been in her head. She knew that voice, but from where? Who was she? Where was she? All at once she needed to scream, to flail and be let out! Nothing moved, her body refused to obey.

"Transmission Interrupted. New Code Implemented."

And then Kira Thorne opened her eyes.

Marik Thorne knew he was about to die.

Despite Cami's valiant escape at the hands of their captors, a small horde of Imperial troops stood between them and their ship. Blaster fire pinned them down, the continuous fire of a BL-77 automatic cannon shaking the thin girder between them and a burning death. He gripped his blaster pistol tight to his chest and murmured a prayer to the old, silent gods of Balmorra. He never prayed before, never attended a single service back home before the war. _The threat of death makes pious men of us all_, he thought.

Next to him, Cami was not going to go silently. Her right eye was glowing with blue light and flickers of similar illumination danced across her cheeks and neck. She knelt behind a portable cover she'd thrown down. Cursing the "entire bloody empire," she rose just enough to send a stream of fire down range.

A sniper bolt took her in the shoulder and she fell onto her back, the blaster pistol in her left hand skittering across the duracrete floor and out of reach. Marik stared at her form writhing in pain, smelling her burned flesh and seeing the exposed muscle and bone burned and blackened.

She was less than a meter away. All he needed was to reach out and take her hand and pull her back behind the metal girder where he sought refuge. Such a short distance, but as the cannon fire returned, the half-meter seemed a yawning chasm full of red arms of light reaching for him.

Marik shut his eyes and pressed against the metal, focusing on the coolness of it. Vibrations pelted all around him, he felt the raking fire striking the metal, seeking flesh and life beyond the plastoid. "Make peace before you leave, son," his father said just before they fled. "Make peace with the All and the Earth, for there we will return. Make peace and you will go in peace."

_Bam-bam-bam-bam!_ The fire shook all thoughts of calm and peace from him. He couldn't do it. His father had never meant for him to make peace like this. _They were the brave ones, the soldiers. Not me! I never wanted this, never_!

"Marik!" Cami shouted, jarring his thoughts enough to open his eyes. She reached for him, gloved fingers stretching the distance. "Help me, damn it!" Her eyes focused on his and their gazes locked. He'd come this far with her, discovered the horrid truth of it all._Better to die here than go back, knowing that_.

Her fingers were centimeters from him, reaching and desperate. _Better to die here_. But he'd die a coward. Only Cami would know, but it seemed like enough. The faces of Ghosts floated in his memory: Eram, Aria, Damian and the rest. They'd died so bravely, fighting for a mission they did not understand. _Sacrificed to keep this secret. This horrid secret. They died for nothing… nothing unless… unless…_

Marik felt something stir in him, something alien but so strong it filled him. It moved him like a puppeteer, sliding his fingers to the thermal grenade at his belt. His fingers armed it and his body twisted to throw. The grenade landed and exploded at the feet of the BL-77 operators and turned the weapons' shouts of fire to the sound of men screaming.

Courage never moved him before but the thought of those soldiers on his homeworld, dying for him, for Kira, drew it from him like a rancor driven out of its cave. It roared within him, and he heard his voice shouting, screaming the revenge of dead men and women. He aimed his pistol and fired once, twice, dropping a soldier. He shouted for Kira, for his mother and father. He cried out for home and he screamed for himself.

The bolt struck him in the chest and drove him onto his back. He felt like a hovertruck hit him and drove all the wind from his lungs. Fire burned from his stomach to his throat, though he saw no real flames. Cami's hand found his and he squeezed it. _Find peace_, his father told him. With his hand in Cami's, he reached for that calm, the acceptance that Damian had that night or the resolve Aria had carried to her grave.

"I'm sorry," he said to Cami. "I tried."

"Look," she whispered over a sudden silence. "Look, Marik."

He opened his eyes and the sight that greeted him made no sense.

"Kira?"

_[Four Hours Earlier]_

"Hang on!" Cami shouted over the alarms and drove the _Silver Silence_ away just moments before collision. The flight from Nar Shaddaa had been uneventful, though Cami's plan filled him with fear and apprehension. He'd seen her ship in dock, but that wasn't enough to make him believe she'd actually been Imperial Intelligence. _She's too young_.

One look at her told Marik that this was not something she'd counted on. Being dragged out of hyperspace moments before their planned reversion told him two things: they were waiting for them, or this was a precaution they always took.

"Unknown freighter, process clearance codes or be destroyed. You have entered a no-fly zone."

"No kidding," Cami said and punched a few switches on her console. Lights flashed and then changed color before she hit a few more. The ship twisted and dove again, avoiding an orbital laser battery. No sooner had she pulled up from that dive than she pulled hard on the stick to send the ship rocketing upward and spiraling away from an Imperialcruiser. The orbit of Ilum was filled with ships. Marik had never seen so many in one place.

An alarm drew Marik's attention. "Fighters at two o'clock," he said, his tone high and rising as his worry grew. "This part of your plan too?"

"Yep," she said and tilted the ship to port and applied enough thrust to send the ship rocketing toward the incoming fighters. Marik blinked. "You're kidding right?"

She leaned forward and hit a switch. "Alpha Leader, process Code Zero Five Bantha Four."

"But the hail said…"

"Shut! Up!"

The fighters were visible now, tiny arrows flying toward them at breakneck speed. From the briefings he'd given Republic Naval officers, he knew those fighters had enough firepower to down their ship. Their onboard missiles could take down a small cruiser if given a chance.

"Operative," a thickly accented voice said over the comm, "It has been… a while. We presumed you dead."

"You put me in a Hutt's chains, Keeper," she said, her voice suddenly just as accented. Marik blinked at that, raising an eyebrow. His stomach began to twist with suspicion. "Where was I supposed to keep a holo comm, in my underwear?"

"Your place is not to make jests. You have come to us under highly unusual circumstances. Explain."

Cami watched the stars. Marik guessed she was keeping a close eye on those fighters. Her cybernetic eye pulsed with blue light and he thought he saw other lights race each other across her neck and cheek. "Mission was a success, as you probably know . I spent the past two months in a bacta tank on Nal Hutta. Ilum is where I knew I'd find you, Keeper."

"I see," the voice said. "I've cleared you a path. Let's talk."

She turned off the comm and turned the freighter in the direction the fighters now took. They formed up with her, with two of them leading and two following. Marik felt himself break into a sweat. "Part of the plan, right?"

She turned to look at him. "Now its like we talked about. All right?" Her accent was gone. He nodded. "You're… on my side right?"

She smirked and touched his shoulder. "Trust me, I've been waiting for this for a year. Just needed a slicer capable enough to break through the systems here."

Marik nodded and touched the spikes in his vest pocket. He'd built them himself, crafted with the same care that smugglers had for their starships. Each one contained powerful code slices that could break through anything the Republic could offer. He only hoped the Empire was no more talented in security.

The ship was guided down to a landing pad that seemed no more than a huge snow drift. Wind buffeted them the whole way down and snow and ice collected on the transparisteel canopy by the time Marik saw a hangar door opening like a great eye on the side of the snow drift. _That's going to be trouble if they lock us down_.

Once down into the small hangar bay, Cami got up and belted on her twin blaster pistols. "Stick to the plan all right? This should be close enough to infiltrate their records. Just beep me twice when you've gotten the data." She started for the hatch and paused, turned toward him and smiled. "Good luck."

And then she was gone and Marik walked alone toward the computer terminal at the heart of the ship. He spent a good portion of the trip learning its systems, its weaknesses and its strengths. Luckily for him, he knew the system fairly well already. As part of counter-intelligence slicing, he had to learn on Imperial terminals, and this was one of the most advanced terminals he'd ever seen. He'd have to make it fly through enemy territory just like Cami's piloting had done.

When she'd gone for ten minutes, Marik logged the system on and found the holoband. Encrypting his signal, he merged his own and was instantly sucked into the information stream of the Imperial garrison on Ilum. Applying one spike, he sought out the correct dump files and ports through lower security. He latched onto the files of a lower record mainframe, applied a second spike that burst him through mid-level security and set to work finding a way up the ladder again.

Footsteps outside his workstation made his heart skip a beat. Soldiers had entered the ship and were scanning it! Quickly, he shut the computer terminal's door and locked it. Cami told him the terminal was meant to be a secret, that Imperial agents were supposed to infiltrate even their own ranks and only intel scanners would pick up such a hidden room. He hoped they were right.

He held his breath as the footfalls of armored boots stopped nearby. The trooper's voices came muffled and thick over their helmet's speakers and through the ship's walls. "Nothing, move on."

"Wait I think…. No, nothing. Heartbeat sensor picked up something but it's gone. Glitch maybe."

Marik swallowed to push his hard-beating heart back down into its rightful place in his chest. Meanwhile his seeker-spike indicated that it had found a likely thin port through security and Marik set to work slicing through it. His eyes and fingers moved rapidly through the sequences of code, his well-trained mind recognizing openings and weak points, sequences of symbols, numbers and codes that equated passwords and log numbers. Before long, he applied a heavy slicing spike and broke through into a data cache so full of material that Marik's breath caught.

Experiments. Ilum was here for experiments. He saw maps to worlds with holding cells, operating theatres and mind-slicing cores. He traced their records to their sources and what he saw ran his blood cold. They had been there before the Empire had taken Ilum. These experiments were _Republic_ records.

Unbelieving, he sought further to prove it all wrong, that they had been fabricated, altered, but the more he looked, the more sickened he became. Force sensitive children seemed to be the favorites, coming in large numbers but signed for entirely by Republic personnel. "Not a single Jedi name here," he whispered, realizing even as he said it that Republic naval and bureaucratic personnel had authorized these movements, not Jedi. These kids never made it to Coruscant.

"They're all Force-sensitive," he told himself, opening a list of experiment numbers. All of them listed strength and density of potential, the strongest being highlighted and listed for testing. He followed that trail until he found what he'd come for. The profile of the tests indicated that patients were to be used to infiltrate Imperial space and gain access to Sith training grounds. The implanted datacores in subject's minds would record coordinates, regimens, names, everything of importance. And then…

"Game over," he whispered, closing his eyes. They would act like a beacon, transmitting on such a high frequency that it would destroy the mind of the agent and possibly kill the body as well. The Sith would have never known, and the subject would have no knowledge that they were spying. A perfect infiltration with no traces, no trails… until the Empire got hold of the technology.

"And they wanted us to destroy the evidence on Balmorra… thought that was all they had managed to resurrect of the project." But they were wrong, Marik saw. The Empire had captured more than just Balmorra. Without being able to tell negotiators why certain worlds were not viable collateral, the Republic had unknowingly given away their own spy technology. Balmorra was just the first. In time, others would come online. He felt suddenly dead inside, betrayed and sickened. The Republic had started this and now they were trying to cover it up.

He downloaded every location the mind-slicing project had taken place at and a list of names who had signed for the test subjects. Here, he paused and a realization hit him. Only Force-sensitive children were being used. "Kira," he whispered. "Oh no, Kira…" None of them had known, not his mother or father. Marik had suspected but never knew for certain, he thought she'd just been able to guess his thoughts.

He clicked his commlink three times, indicating he'd succeeded. His comm crackled to life in response. "Mister Thorne, I'd like you to join us on the flight deck. Miss Eloria was just telling us how you've come to visit."

"Marik, get–!" but her voice was cut short by what sounded like the butt of a rifle. The door to his hiding place suddenly burst with light and slid aside, revealing two troopers leveling their weapons at him.

_[Now]_

Kira Thorne gazed at the floor where the Imperial troopers lay dead. She fell to her knees with an anguished cry that made Marik's heart ache. He wheezed, trying to sit up but the pain in his chest made him fall back with a groan. Cami's arm wrapped around his shoulder and pulled him to his feet. She seemed to buckle under her own pain but Marik was able to support her. Together, they stepped toward his sister.

"Kira?" he said, trying to keep his voice from breaking from the pain. "Is… that you?"

She lifted her head, eyes rising to meet his as she rocked on her knees. The troopers all around her were dead, blown apart by his grenade or her… Marik struggled to grasp the truth of it. Her powers. Kira was Force-sensitive and the Sith were trying to turn her into a data bomb.

Cami grunted and he felt her nearly fall, but he pulled her close. The two of them leaned on each other as they limped onward. Her ship was just meters away, its entryway open and inviting.

Kira shook her head and got to her feet. She looked at him with eyes that seemed almost normal, like he remembered them from years ago. Her gaze slid from him to the open hangar door and the sky beyond. Smoke from a crashed shuttle snaked up from the wreckage, telling how she might have arrived.

She pointed to the sky. "They come," she said, her voice thick, like she wasn't used to being inside her own body. "You, go?"

"Who comes?" Marik asked, feeling the pain in his chest lessening. His vest had ablated most of the shot, and while there would be some bruising, he seemed to have suffered little other damage. As his pain ebbed, his voice grew stronger. "What's happening Kira?"

"Masters, coming home." She kept pointing, staring at the snow-ridden sky. "Find me."

"Kira, come with me, we're…" he looked at Cami, frowning. "The Republic did all this. This is their project, the Sith just stole it."

Cami's eyes seemed to harden. "I…" she coughed and groaned. "I knew it… you got the data?"

He nodded. "And every location that's using this stuff." He looked back at his sister and touched her arm. The coat she wore was thin but she seemed to take no notice of the cold. "C'mon Kira, we're getting out of here."

Kira turned, looking at him. For a moment, she seemed not to recognize him. Then she smiled, just a little. "Somewhere better," she whispered and then picked up a blaster pistol, handing it to him. "Let me go home?"

"Balmorra's in Imperial hands… they'll take you again—"

"Somewhere better," she said, her voice still soft but insistent. She touched the pistol. "Send me home to Ma, little brother?"

Marik glanced at the weapon in his hand and realization came to him like a crashing tidal wave. He felt tears sting his eyes and a memory of Kira's head on his shoulder as they escaped Balmorra flooded his vision. He'd promised to take her somewhere better. He'd meant Coruscant, his apartment. He'd take care of her there. Not… he couldn't… he couldn't kill her.

Kira's scream nearly made him drop the pistol. She fell to her knees and blood seeped from her nose and corner of her mouth. Gripping the sides of her head, she let out another wail of pain. _It's happening, she's signaling someone… her… Masters? She's…_She was dying, he knew that. Dying in pain from the inside because what the Republic created and the Sith used.

"What's happening?" Cami said. "What's wrong?"

Kira's scream ended and she gasped, trying to draw shaky breaths. When she coughed, more blood came up. Marik looked to Cami. "She's signaling someone, they're using her like a beacon, I saw it… they turn them into… its killing her!"

"Little brother," Kira said, touching his arm. "Please." He raised the pistol and aimed at his sister. He hadn't meant to do it, it just happened. He felt something squeezing his hand, contracting his finger on the weapon's trigger. _We interrupted the experiment, it was never finished… she's aware, of everything_. There was no torture greater than someone else's control of you, he knew. The Sith sometime could take control of a sentient body, make it do things. This was no different.

_Be at peace_, he thought. _Go in peace_. He knelt, letting Cami stand on her own. "Get the ship ready to go," he said and looked at her. "I… need a moment." Cami nodded and struggled to the ship, cursing at her own injury the whole time.

He touched Kira's face, and pulled her into an embrace. Marik closed his eyes, committing everything he could to memory. "I love you, big sister," he said. "Tell… tell Ma and Da I love them too, when you see them."

"Goodbye, little brother." Her voice sounded calm, almost happy. He fought back the tears that came to his eyes, steadied a hand that wanted to shake. "Go in peace," he said. "Be at peace." Then, he pulled the trigger.

Afterword, he couldn't recall the escape from Ilum, or that he'd helped pilot the ship while Cami treated her wound. He remembered the Republic Fleet emerging from hyperspace. He remembered Cami telling him to jump them in words that formed expletives he barely understood. Finally, he remembered the blue tunnel that meant they were gone.

"What will you do?" Cami asked him after he'd managed to bring her up to speed on the whole story. He shrugged, knowing he could never go back to Intel now. He couldn't even go back to Coruscant. If this went as high up as those records showed, they'd terminate him as soon as he set foot back home.

"Well…" Cami trailed off for a moment, stared at her instrument panel, then glanced back at him. "You have a list, right? And…I could use a co-pilot? What do you say we save the galaxy from some crazy science?"

Marik nearly smiled. Yes, those places needed to be shut down, but many of them were going to be impossible to get to. They would need some help. He turned to her and nodded. "Know anyone who could help us out?"

"I might know a few disreputable folks we can visit."

"Then I'm in."

Cami turned back to her console with a wide grin on her face. Marik turned his gaze away to stare into hyperspace. He was in, for the whole of it. He'd never hesitate again and finally, he felt that he had a purpose. That feeling settled over him like a warm blanket and he realized he was going to be okay.

He was finally at peace.


End file.
